{"data":{"id":"46","type":"artist","attributes":{"id":46,"topgoose_id":2706,"tms_id":46,"display_name":"Jo Baer","sort_name":"Baer Jo","display_date":"1929–2025","begin_date":"1929","end_date":"2025","biography":"\u003cp\u003eThe simplicity of the elements of Jo Baer’s\n\u003ca href=\"/collection/works/10189\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eUntitled (Korean)\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e belies the complexity of\nthe whole: subtle differences in the weight\nand shape of the lines draw in the eye,\ncolors vibrate and merge in peripheral vision,\nand the white edge that extends beyond\nthe black border seems to bleed into space.\nThis work belongs to a series from 1962–\n63 in which Baer repeated this format,\nvarying only the geometry along the upper\nedge within an otherwise strict template.\n\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis series was Baer’s first\nimportant statement as a painter and\nmarked her entrance into the emerging\ndiscourse of Minimalism. Like other New\nYork artists in the 1960s, Baer made\nabstract works that engaged the viewer’s\nperceptual experience, often through\nseriality and geometric form. Yet, while most\nof her contemporaries began to work\nwith industrial materials, regarding painting\nas burdened by illusionism, Baer\npursued painting’s potential as a radical,\nnonobjective medium. Her application\nof paint emphasizes the flatness of the\ncanvas, producing “paintings that picture\ntheir own shapes.” Baer’s commitment\nto Minimalist painting was informed by\ngestalt and other theories of perception,\nwhich she had studied in the 1950s.\n\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe color and shape of \u003cem\u003eUntitled (Korean)\u003c/em\u003e\nproduce such optical phenomena as Mach\nbands (where contrast between a light\nand dark field heightens the luminosity of\nboth) and retinal glare (in which a white\narea appears to expand). Baer described her\nworks as “painted light,” asserting that\nthey “do not represent light, they are light.”\u003c/p\u003e","on_view":false,"artport":false,"biennial":true,"collection":true,"ulan_id":"500009657","wikidata_id":"Q1689871","created_at":"2017-08-30T17:33:28.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-04-13T07:04:59.601-04:00","links":{"artworks":"/api/artists/46/artworks","exhibitions":"/api/artists/46/exhibitions"}}}}